Cars that drive themselves?

Have we finally reached the point where cars might actually be able to drive themselves, with little or no input from their passengers? It has long been the stuff of science fiction and movies (as in the Tom Cruise film The Minority Report), and has been whispered about in recent years by many scientists and engineers. But now General Motors has come right out and said that they want to make this happen in a decade.

Now, I don't know about you, but most of the time, I am in a car because I want to get to somewhere else, not because I want to be in my car. And if I have to spend my time in the car, I would sure love to be able to take a nap, or read a book, or work on a laptop. But of course, that's not possible for drivers today, and most of us can't afford to hire a driver to shuttle us around. So the idea has a good deal of appeal to me.

There are of course many hurdles, not the least of which are technical in nature. Driving a vehicle really is a very complicated task. A person needs to continuously calculate their speed relative to a myriad of objects around them. They have to respond quickly to unexpected situations in which there are many variables to consider. So getting a computer to see and do all this is no small task. Then there are the legal questions of what happens if a car gets into a wreck when it is driving, etc.

But I for one am excited for the day I can spend my driving time doing something more important or enjoyable. I think the first systems will take care of the driving only on the freeways. But hey, for me that's a great start. When a 1-hour freeway drive can become a 1 hour nap, I'll be a happy camper.


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Wolf In Sheep's Clothing

It is very trendy in today's day and age to publicly announce how green you or your company are. But we must also remember that just because some people claim they are green, doesn't necessarily make it so.

Case in point, a CNN article about using ice cooling in large buildings in New York. They claim that by freezing water into ice at night, and then blowing air over it during the day to cool the air, they are saving money and helping the environment. Well, they most certainly ARE saving money. And they most definitely are lowering their PEAK-TIME energy usage. But are they actually helping the environment overall?

Everyone knows that it takes energy to make ice. And it takes energy to keep it as ice until you need it. It takes more energy to make ice, than to cool the air at the time you need it. Simply because of inefficiencies in materials, etc. All these companies are doing, is shifting their power usage from a peak time in the afternoon to an off-peak time in the middle of the night. And overall they are actually increasing their energy usage. It just costs less at night, saving them money. But they want to make this big hoopla over it. And yes, I'm sure that they are saving some little bit of pollution since off-peak power generation is more efficient and environmentally-friendly. But what about the added power being used to cool all that ice? And what about the environmental cost of building all that machinery?

Wouldn't it simply be better to find TRULY innovative ways to save money and the environment? Look at IBM, they have a bunch of telecommuting employees, and they save big $$ doing it. Most of these companies could have at least some of their employees work part-time or full-time from their homes. That way they don't even have to come into the city, or use up office space that needs to be heated and cooled. The real key is eliminating excess, not just adding more of it and calling it environmentally-sound excess.

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Brain-Controlled Toys

Using your brain alone to control objects and games will be the big interface trend of the near-future. I think that within 10 years, there will be consumer devices available for people to buy that will use brain scanning. One obvious implementation could be in video game systems. Another would be in a computer interface to replace keyboard and mouse. By the time my child is a teenager, I think it will be entirely possible that she will be playing the video games of the day simply by thought.

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The Postal Joke

Who likes the USPS and thinks they do a great job? Raise your hands now. Did anybody hear the question? Why didn't anybody raise their hands?

One of my favorite economist writers makes the case of why most of us don't care for the USPS, and why it really should change. Read up on it here:

Privatize the Postal Service (for Starters)

Supreme Meddling

What DOESN'T the US Supreme Court (and many other courts, for that matter) get its hands into anymore? What was once devised as one of the 3 checks and balances, has become all 3 pieces. There is nothing the court won't touch, if it wants to. It is simply a partisan display of politics and government intervention most of the time. Here is yet another example:

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The AP Bans Paris Hilton

It appears that the AP decided to run a 1-week ban on Paris Hilton stories, just to see what would happen. That fact alone is enough to make me sing their praises (where I am usually just deriding them). Turns out that nobody actually called up and asked for a Paris Hilton story, during the whole blackout. Hmmm.... sounds like all these celebs are actually not as newsworthy to people as the media make them out to be. See my recent blog about this media-fed craze. Maybe if enough of us would tell our news outlets and the AP that we don't care about every detail in the life of Paris Hilton, Brittney Spears, or Anna Nicole Smith, they would finally get the hint, and quit pushing these useless celebs' lives upon us.

Read the AP article.

Useful GPS For The Masses

Imagine for a moment that you and a friend are on a day hike in a remote area. You get disoriented, and can't find your way back to the car. After a few hours you are really lost, darkness is starting to fall, and you start to panic. You've long since run out of water, you have no food, you haven't seen anybody else all day, and you're not dressed for the cold night temperatures. Now imagine that you have an escape route. A way to tell people exactly where you are, and that you are in trouble and need help.

That is the kind of useful technology that Isaac Daniel hopes will save people's lives. Because of an incident with his 8-year old son being reported as missing, he has created a line of sneakers with a built-in GPS tracking. They allow you to push a button on the sneaker, and send a wireless alert is sent to a monitoring service. In some emergencies (such as a lost child or missing Alzheimer's patient), a parent or guardian can ask the monitoring service to activate the GPS remotely in order to find the missing person.

What's next? This shoe is meant for emergencies, but I imagine that in the near future we will have more of these types of products around for everyday use. So for example, you will be able to create a "virtual fence" area from which they can't leave without triggering an alert to you. So if you child goes outside the neighborhood when they are supposed to be at home, you get a text message. Or if they leave school grounds during school hours (possibly due to an abduction), you get instant notification. It is always better to know about a possible abduction right away, rather than waiting a few hours until the child doesn't show up on time. It could literally mean the difference between life and death.

Read the article on CNN.com

Turn Garbage Into Clean Energy

Read the article on www.PopSci.com

It looks as though the concept of turning garbage into energy rather than dumping it into a landfill has finally come of age. These trash converters aim to use the principle of plasma gasification to turn just about any trash (including chemical weapons, metal, and concrete) into a synthesis gas, which can be used to generate electricity, and an obsidian-like glass which can be used as a building material. It takes electricity to start the reaction, but once the reaction is going, it produces excess electricity, which can then be used to power surrounding buildings or sold back to the power grid. We're going to need a lot more of these types of converters if we hope to take care of the world's energy and garbage problems.

Urban Road Race For Robotic Cars

Read the full story on CNN.com

This is the kind of technology I've been yearning for all my driving life. Sure, it is still many years off, but at least I can now have a glimmer of hope that it will be available to me in my lifetime.

Imagine getting in your car, telling it where you want to go, and then sitting back and relaxing, maybe taking a nap, or getting an early start on your day's work. You don't have to worry about getting in an accident because your car and every other car out there are driving themselves around, without the flaws of human judgment.

One potential downside? Maybe technology (coupled with ubiquitous ultra-high-speed internet) this will encourage people to commute farther to work. After all, if you can do a lot of your work, or anything else, while driving, the driving doesn't seem like so much of a waste of time.

Of course, some will say that this technology will ultimately become fairly useless, as the promise of affordable flying cars starts to look more like a reality (see companies like Moller for more info on the future of flying cars). The concept would be the same, as you tell it where you want to go and then sit back, but the challenges of navigating through roads in the sky will be much less difficult than navigating around on the ground.

But the idea of using your driving time to do something enjoyable or productive is so alluring, that we can hardly afford not to reach for it. So raise a glass to the computer chauffeurs of tomorrow. And hope he doesn't crash as often as the computers of today.

Silent Supersonic Jet?

Read the story on CNN.com

Is it finally possible to make a "quiet" supersonic jet? The folks at Lockheed Martin's fabled Skunk Works think they've designed just such an aircraft.

With advanced design and technology, they believe they have designed a plane that can cruise at about 1100 MPH, while producing only 1 percent as much noise on the ground as the recently decommissioned Concorde. All this while obtaining considerable range (4,600 miles, Chicago to Rome), and some fairly fine luxury seating.

I for one hope that they succeed. I hope that this spurs the development of affordable and quiet supersonic passenger jets. For the last 50 years, passenger planes have gone the same speed. We have not realized any gains in the speed with which we travel through the air, despite 50 years of technology evolution. It is definitely time to move around the planet faster.